New home prices in­crease in Au­gust

New home prices rose in Au­gust for the first time to a level higher than a year ear­lier, af­ter a slew of pol­icy mea­sures an­nounced by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment helped prop up sales.

Prices rose in 35 cities of the to­tal 70 tracked, com­pared with 31 in July, the Na­tional Bureau of Sta­tis­tics said. The rise in the num­ber of cities that saw price in­creases helped push av­er­age prices 1.7 per­cent higher than a year ear­lier, com­pared with a 0.4 per­cent fall in July.

How­ever, the im­prov­ing sales have not trans­lated into a re­vival of realty in­vest­ments, which ex­panded just 3.5 per­cent in the first eight months, the slow­est pace since 2000, ac­cord­ing to the NBS.

Av­er­age prices rose 0.17 per­cent in Au­gust from July, gain­ing for a fourth con­sec­u­tive month, ac­cord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal’s cal­cu­la­tions based on of­fi­cial data.

The price pickup and months of ro­bust sales were fu­eled by the five in­ter­est-rate cuts since Novem­ber and the eas­ing of var­i­ous re­stric­tions.